the lunch room meal

1.

when empty tables fill

with many-minded friends
the same motions carry

across as each person tends
to the uncentered plots

trailing toward their ends
I can guess just as well

as they can the future's trends

2.
lips drawn back against
cold skies blackened with
mildew-colored angst seen
from the light of some
gross imagination running
off of some fumes from another
parked car rhythmically puffing
as the ice gets scraped away

lips with pinkish complexion
turning blue with envy like
green waters of brackish ponds
and red leaves contrast the
aching brown rose pedals
simpering smiles hiding sounds
vacant memories traversing
backward in time's grasp

each memory replayed in reverse
the motion's dainty fingers
pawing at eloquent shop windows
in slow caressing movements

spinning back faster
the lifespan of each caldron
of past experiences opens
into a strange metaphysical reckoning

suddenly, with each bite
and tender drink the web is formed
showing me now as I eat
against a backdrop of aliens

eating in dismay or delight
in disharmony or infinity
singularity or infirmary
one bite at a time

I see how I've turned into who I am
and I feel the breeze of seasons
changing yet it feels so similar
to last year at this time

and the year before

but these faces eating
with gestures and hollow words
hearing sounds of laughter
against that faint breeze

I tell you --
loneliness exists in parcels
tiny, well-mapped acres
deep within motion

oh, how I could tell you --
if words were crayons and temples
were made of sticks and twigs
delicate and weeping

the crackling wind would jolt us
out of our eating slumber
and words would fall like colors
sprinkled on childhood drawings

each memory transfixes then reposes
until it replays at a higher speed
until I repeatedly find myself
ancient and dreaming in my childhood

adulthood is an incantation
a lie that separates each of us
the individual from himself
to create a productive agent

no, that child, growing older by the second
replaying quickly with each fevered bite
and each parched gulp clutching the utensils --
that child is awake and sleeping

defining me in embryonic rage

love, no
not love

no, not anything, but
keep on eating until this meal
ends and these tables are cleared
and I will continue to age

in both dispositions
ancient and new
like the universe herself
sleeping yet dolefully awesome

not unwoken --

but still barely known
and completely untamed